


A Cord of Three Strands, Separately

by wei



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2010-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:51:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wei/pseuds/wei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Team 7 had their Saanin's swapped?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the AU meme at naruto_meme. Prompt: What if Team 7 had their Saanin's swapped? What crazy antics would happen? And for the sake of argument, lets put Sasuke with Tsunade, Sakura with Jiraiya and Naruto with Orochimaru.

_Jiraiya is such a pervert,_ wrote Sakura to Ino. _I'm convinced that he only suggested training me so he could get me to gather material for his stupid books._

_Well it certainly wasn't for your looks, Forehead,_ Ino wrote back. _It seems to be working, though. That last short story about the bathhouse was much more believable. Tenten and I only burst out laughing at half the lines._

Leering looks and awkward conversations aside, Sakura liked training under Jiraiya. Even if he only offered out of pity, she relished finally having a teacher who actually taught her, demonstrating jutsus that would take advantage of her chakra control, offering tips on fighting styles to compensate for her weaknesses, and telling her stories of the world outside Konoha for her mind to piece together the developing political situation.

She knew it was far, far better than being the afterthought on Team Seven, but sometimes she thinks she'd trade it all for those early days when they were all together.

\--

Sasuke's still not sure what happened. He and Naruto had fought at the Valley of the End until he was fairly sure neither of them should have survived. He thinks he won, since he had a vague recollection of standing over Naruto's unbreathing body, but he also thinks he saw Naruto and Kabuto walking away together, and those ought to have been mutually exclusive.

His first clear memory was waking up in the hospital in Konoha a week after he had left it. Sasuke kind of wishes he hadn't woken up, because he spent the next couple of days stuck in bed, being chewed out by what had to have been half the village.

Recovering didn't help, since he ended up restricted from leaving the village and running errands for Tsunade. At first, he thought that she was punishing him or perhaps keeping an eye on him so he wouldn't bolt, but eventually he decided that she was just lazy and knew he had nothing better to do.

He hated Tsunade for making him her personal gopher, hated Sakura for leaving and growing stronger, hated Naruto for disappearing, and most of all, hated that whenever he asked about Naruto, he was told that it was above his clearance level.

Shizune, Tsunade's other lackey, told him to stop moping. He ignored her. But when he saw Tsunade perform miracle after miracle, he thought that maybe he was in the presence of real power, and if he swallowed his pride, no one would ever die in front of him again.

\--

Naruto was sure he followed Orochimaru for the right reasons. It was Sasuke or him, and protecting his precious people was part of his ninja way. However, he was also pretty sure that he was staying for the wrong reasons. The snake had promised him his heart's desires, and when Naruto had scoffed, Orochimaru dropped the point.

Naruto was happy in Sound, and that was the problem. He liked being in a village that treated him like a human being, who didn't think of him as a demon spawn (and he thought that even if they knew his secret, they wouldn't care too much). Most of them didn't like him, but he liked almost all of them, and it was hard to think of them as enemy shinobi when he saw them struggling for acknowledgment or a place just as he had.

He avoided missions that took him to Fire Country because he didn't know what he'd have done if his old friends asked him to come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it is, this chapter should be a complete story. I had gotten a request for a continuation, which is in the second chapter, though I don't think I added anything in the followup that wasn't in the first part, so it's more of an epilogue than a chapter.


	2. Coda

There had been a massive, three-way battle between Konoha, Oto, and the Akatsuki over Naruto. Although all the forces were powerful and had been preparing for the confrontation for almost three years, in a way they all had lost. Otogakure was an empty crater, half of Akatsuki was killed, and Sakura and Sasuke were returning to Konoha empty handed. They'd all made the same mistake, treating Naruto like a prize to be won and forgetting that he was hardly a helpless princess to be fought over.

It was only in the aftermath of the battle that Sakura realized she wasn't going to get her happy ending. She had stood with Naruto watching Sasuke bury his brother and said something offhand about the three of them eating at Ichiraku ramen when they got back, and Naruto stared at her with a solemn expression that looked so out of place on him, and said "Sakura, you know I'm not going back with you, right?"

She remembered babbling, asking Naruto why, asking if it was her fault, asking if it was because she hadn't been a good enough friend, and all her old insecurities, which had disappeared when she had learned how to rebuild her friendship with Ino, came back.

He had said no, but he was a Sound ninja now, and Sakura finally noticed the music note on his hitai-ite and thought, he really had changed. Of course she had changed, and Sasuke had changed, and it was ridiculous to expect Naruto to remain unchanged, but she still didn't want to accept that his endless optimism and naivety was gone.

He'd said goodbye, and Naruto and Sasuke postured as if they were still twelve and still rivals, but in the end, Naruto had disappeared into the scattering groups of Oto survivors. She's cried when he left, feeling as if she regressed to her twelve year old self, while Sasuke quietly told her, "We can't always go back to the way things were, and sometimes, it's not worth trying to." She attempted to slap him then, and he dodged and fell quiet.

Sakura stayed angry whole way back, and ignored the thought that he had watched Itachi die in front of him and maybe he knew what he was talking about. She snapped at the other Konoha ninjas until the nightly camps were just her and Sasuke. He worked on writing mission reports while she tried to burn out her anger on training, and she wondered whether he had gotten his supply of patience from dealing with Tsunade or from practicing medicine.

She admitted then that she wasn't angry at Sasuke: she was angry with Naruto for leaving behind his problems in Konoha, the way she had jumped at the chance to when Jiraiya had offered, and the way Sasuke had attempted to so long before. Team seven ran from their problems, the way their mentors once had, and ended mired in the past - but that wasn't quite right. Sasuke had escaped.

Sakura pulled him aside outside of the village gates and apologized. He simply shrugged and as she watched him enter the village, she promised, "We'll find you again, Naruto, and things won't be the same - they'll be better."


End file.
